Ok, I didn’t play the first Dead Space but I was told that
there was a video in this one that would explain everything I needed to know
about the previous story and that I could just jump straight in. There was a
video, and it explained as much about the first game as a footballer could
about politics. But I played it anyway and to be honest I didn’t really grasp
what was going on with the story, and for a change I didn’t care because it was
frickin’ awesome!
You play as engineer Isaac Clark in the sci-fi horror sequel Dead
Space 2. You find yourself waking from a coma in a city crawling with ‘Necromophs’
which appear to be human corpses. They seem more like zombies in principle, but
more like aliens in appearance. Anyway, from the word go you have to battle
through swarms of them and straight away you get the feeling that you're
fighting for your life. And this feeling never goes away throughout the entire game.
You start in a hospital and quite quickly move on to find a
large range of weapons and the iconic engineering suit. From what I grasped
in the story there is something called 'the marker' that is causing all these
evil things and Isaac is trying to locate it. It’s a little basic and not very
interesting, but for a change the core storyline isn’t really the important thing
going on here. Instead the developers have made this game extremely more
personal and your character is much more focused on fighting an internal battle
that is going on inside his mind.
Hallucinations happen at really unexpected times which will
cause you to jump and shoot at stuff that isn’t really there. The great part
about this is that you know nothing is there but you won’t be able to help but
shoot at nothing anyway. This game will keep you on your toes. You’ll be
checking corners and jumping at every little noise, like a bottle falling on
the floor.
Game play is great too. Isaac’s movements are really smooth
and the animations are great. When you die during the game, and trust me you
will die, you won’t even be disappointed because the death animations are that
graphic and gruesome that your jaw will drop with shock. You can blow limbs of your
enemies and then use those limbs to kill more enemies. There are even crying
babies that you have to kill before they kill you. You can interact loads with
the environment as well. Isaac has some sort of gravity tool that can pick up
and throw items around. Even though this
game is now two years old, the graphics are still fantastic and will easily give
new games a run for their money.
Dead Space 2 does seem to take you on an A to B type of rout
where you have no choice about the path that Isaac will take. However, this
actually works out really well. It works well because you know you have to walk
down that long hallway, you know there is no other rout, and you know that at over
the next thirty minutes of game play you are going to jump, shout and scream at
least ten times... and two thirds of those will be at stuff like brooms falling
over and lights going out. The linear rout of Dead Space 2 actually helps to
serve the game and make the horror that little bit scarier.
The sound is also top notch in this game. If you have
surround sound then you are in for a treat. Dead Space 2 uses this like no
other game I have ever played. If you hear something to your right and you turn
to look at what it is, then the sound moves perfectly in time with you. That's standard you may think, but that’s not all. The game has a way of using
sound so faint that you can hardly hear it. You find yourself thinking that you
should look behind you because of it, and sometimes you may end up having a
little bit of a scream as something pounces at you.
There is a real huge incentive to replay the game as well. Every
time you complete it you’ll unlock a new engineering suit and also be given the
option to take all your gear with you from your last game. During the game you
get to upgrade all your gear and this allows you to keep using and upgrading
other items.
Now if you like a challenge and feel like you want to do
this game on the hardest difficulty then I strongly recommend you play it
through once are twice on an easier difficulty and get that gear fully upgraded.
Because not only are your enemies at their strongest, and not only is there
limited health and ammo supplies, but you also only get three saves throughout
the entire game. This is a game that took me nine hours on the easiest
difficulty. So yeah, good luck with that if you are that crazy.
THE VERDICT
Dead Space 2 has a really boring core storyline. Luckily for
this storyline, the main character has the best internal and external battles
going on that it makes you forget all about what you’re meant to be doing and
instead makes you almost completely focus on just surviving both mentally and physically.
The graphics are brilliantly shocking,
the sound is even better and the game play allows you to choose and modify your
equipment. In short this game is a terrifying thriller. It’s what Resident Evil was back in the day.
LHSRAting for Dead Space 2 – 9/10 (Xbox 360)
-Ayden
No comments:
Post a Comment